Vida. Risa. Amor.

In just a couple of months, it will mark our 7th year living here in Arizona.  Getting to know the neighbors hasn't always been easy since most of us usually just pull into our garages and then shut the door to get back into our air conditioned homes, and the idea of hanging out in our hot front gravel yards doesn't exactly appeal to many people either.  So though it's a bit challenging to get to know the people sharing the same street, I wouldn't say that it is entirely impossible.

I have to admit that I have been dying to do something for a really long time.  My "new" next door neighbors have been living here for almost a year now, and I could probably count on one hand the amount of times the Mom and I have talked to each other.  All that I know so far is that they have a trampoline with no fence, 2 dogs, 4 kids, the Mom drops her kids off at school about the same time I do, (and has cute pedicured feet), and the Dad comes home in scrubs and is gone every once in a while.  I also know that they have never once put any thought into keeping up with their beautiful mesquite tree in their front yard....that I have been dying to be allowed to cut back the branches.

So I stood in my own yard for about 10 minutes before I worked up the nerve to go over and ask the Mom if she'd let me do it.  Here's what I think I said, "So, um, I wondered if I could ask you something, and I really hope you won't think I'm wierd for this,....but, um, I'm basically trapped at home with 4 kids fighting over Mario Carts and computer time for the rest of the day, and I was looking for a chance to get out of the house, and since I really love to be outside and do yardwork, I wondered if you would let me fix up your front yard for you."  I was just waiting for her to look at me like I was an idiot and shut the door in my face, but instead she said, "That is so nice that you offered and I would just kiss you if you did that because I was just going to wait to make my husband do that when he got back from his trip."

I was so psyched!  I had something to do...that mattered, (kind of)....and I didn't have to feel worried about crossing the invisible little line that separates our gravel rocks from theirs.  I was once again in my leaf blowing zen for the rest of the afternoon.  I managed to fill 3 garbage bins with all the funky little mesquite pods that were piled up all over their yard, along with one dead bird, and tons of tree and shrub branches that needed some serious trimming.  I kind of worried that our H.O.A. must have gotten pretty laid back on their rules for them to have let their yard get to that point!

So maybe now when she sees me, she might just think I'm the crazy next door neighbor who cleaned her yard for her...but hey, atleast now I'm able to actually see my kids again when they're walking down the street or riding their bikes on the sidewalk. 

Jesus taught that we should love our neighbors as ourselves...and I'll admit that I don't know that I put that into actual practice as often as I should.  I don't think God would have laid that on my heart for so long if I wasn't supposed to have done that...and maybe it was for more for myself than it was for my neighbor. 

I know I'm "wired" a little differently than most...and I hope God keeps showing me ways to plug myself into the areas of life that He wants me to be connected to.  And I just love yardwork.

I have made several attempts at putting together homemade chore charts with fancy grids and star stickers, but it usually seems like after about the second week we all seem to forget about it, and keeping up with the chore chart seems like a chore itself.  It's busy around here during the school week, but I know I need to slow down and take the time to teach my kids a little responsibility around the house.  Chemo warns me that if I always clean up after all of them, they might really get too used to it and not actually learn how to do some things for themselves.  (This can be challenging for a clean freak perfectionist to learn to do).

I read an article one time and learned sometimes it's better to write things down to your kids so you don't have to let your tone of voice or emotions cause stress...so I found myself writing down a list for my highschool daughter of things I'd like her to "work on".  After I looked at the list, I realized some of my requests were a little bizarre and I had a little tiny moment where I could probably imagine what it's like for her to have to live with a Mom like me:

Josie's Jobs:
1.  Delete 177 of your e-mails.  Seriously.
2.  Get the chunks of wax you use for your braces out of the carpet in your room.
3.  Put away all your doodly-do's and tissue wads off your dresser.
4.  Clean out the sink and shower....and feel free to put away your 2 curling irons, brush, hairspray, and makeup.
5.  Clean out your soccer bag.  Do you need all those empty Powerade and water bottles in there?
6.  Ask Mom BEFORE borrowing her clothes out of her closet and then changing your mind and tossing them on your floor instead. 
7.  Your brother Rylan found your high school ID in the car and your money and he thinks it's his now...(maybe you should re-think about getting a wallet or a purse soon).

So I got to thinking, why stop there?  I have 3 other kids...why not make a  list for each of them as well!

Lanie's Jobs:
1.  You had 4 water bottles in your bed.  Why?
2.  T-shirts fit better folded in drawers...and do you really need 5 Twilight shirts?
3.  Can you put your scissors and markers away...Rylan colored on his face today.
4.  Set your alarm clock for school in the morning...sometimes I oversleep too.
5.  Feel free to get rid of a few of the unmatched socks of your 50 different pairs...and don't make fun of me for always saying "feel free".
6.  Put your lunch in your backpack right away in the morning so I don't have to drive back to the school and drop it off to you.
7.  If I had a dollar for every bobby pin I pick up off the floor, I think I'd be a millionaire by now...

Aydan's Jobs:
1.  Put away your Wii remotes and remember to recharge them.
2.  Homework before Club Penguin, and never before 7 a.m. or after 8 p.m. on school days
3.  Stop drinking milk out of the carton.
4.  Feel free to dump the sand out of your shoes before you bring them inside.
5.  When you make forts, put everything back the way it was.
6.  There is a room in the house where you can actually put your dirty laundry.
7.  Rinse the sink after you brush your teeth.  Toothpaste spit in the sink is gross.

Rylan's Jobs:
1.  If you want to play Mario Carts you have to clean up your toys first.
2.  Let me wash your ni-ni once in a while.
3.  Your empty milk sippy cups go in the sink not the floor.
4.  Color on paper not yourself.
5.  When you wrestle with your big brother, let him win once in a while, you make him feel bad sometimes.
6.  Ask me before you decide to eat half the container of Oreo's and smear them on the couch.
7.  Remember to brush your teeth, because I might forget to tell you.

Not everyone is a fan of lists, but for some reason, they help me organize my issues.  I kind of realize I have a lot of issues and if I were to make a list for myself it would be something like this:

Mom's Jobs:
1.  Laugh & smile more.  Take your daughters advice and take that "chill pill".
2.  Admit when you're tired, but be approachable and be there for them.
3.  "Feel free" to love your family and hug and say I love you every day.
4.  Make-out with my husband in front of the kids.  They need to see us show love to each other, and he needs to forget about his hard day at work...and so do you. ;)
5.  Balance hard work with time for relaxing. 
6.  Be an example of selflessness.  Complaining is contagious.
7.  Pray more.  Remember to stop thinking I'm supposed to do this all on my own.

I have a frame in my kitchen with this quote in it:  "A home is walls touched by children, carpets worn by friends, and a hearth warmed with love".  ...not so sure what a hearth is but it all seems to make sense to me!


(and yes, I am making sure my kids read this particular post).

I'm not even going to sugar-coat it....today was probably the loneliest day of the year for me.  Besides chatting with the Mom's at my last-first-day-of-preschool-drop-off this morning, I don't think I had a single conversation with another adult today.  I managed to bumble around a grocery store, look at a bunch of crap at Goodwill and then wander around the obvious preschool Mom hangout:  Target.  If anything, I wasn't going to go home to an empty house.  I was supposed to be enjoying my "freedom", but instead I felt a little bored that I didn't really have anything cool to do.

Right now my husband is over a thousand miles away, my daughters are ignoring and avoiding me, and my two boys cannot seem to hear me no matter how many times or how loud I say things...then they both just think it's funny to just laugh at me if I yell.  That's why I decided to just send them outside to the trampoline...maybe a quiet house isn't so bad after all. 

Facebook is becoming a huge source of insecurity for me as well.  Why is it that I care if anyone comments on my status?  And why did I check it 6 times today?

The excessive heat warning today didn't keep me from going outside.  I needed to find something else productive to do besides cook or clean or organize, so I decided to do some yardwork for a few hours....atleast that felt good.  My neighbors probably think I'm a freak, but there is something about a leaf blower that is extremely calming for me.  That, and country music in the background.

It's probably a big waste of energy to let myself feel this frustrated.  Some days, it just feels exhausting to take care of everyone else.  Are Mom's allowed to admit that?...

Maybe only when they're venting through their blog.

I'll probably delete this post tommorrow.

grr.

I guess I took it for granted of how secure it feels to have my man around.  When he's away, I seem to analyze every noise I hear from outside and triple check the locks before going to bed.  Just the other night he was snoring in the couch next to me while I was checking my e-mail, but it didn't bother me because it was comforting just to have him close.  I feel safe when he's home.  When he's gone, I am also reminded to be thankful that he provides for our family so well.  He works an average of 12 hours a day, 5 days a week, and mostly on his feet.  He's allowed to snore....and he needs more rest.

Life seems to have taken him down a few bumpy roads and just yesterday my husband got the call that his sister, Nena passed away.  The doctors weren't exactly sure of the problem, but she had been sick on and off for a couple of years.  Probably we have visited his family in Mexico about 10 different times through our 14 years of marriage and I was fortunate enough to be able to get to know her before her health started to go.  Our daughter Lanie, was named after her Tia Nena, (which is another nickname for Elena).  She was like a second "mother" to Chemo in that she used to take care of him often when he was little and was the one to save a few of his baby pictures through the years.  She loved parties, dancing, and "oldies" music, cooked special meals just for us, and rocked and cuddled all of our kids when they were babies.  She also had a funny habit of  recommending eating an orange for every ailment like headaches or an upset stomach....for hiccups she would tell me to put a red string on my forehead...(?)   If she was uncomfortable she would rarely mention it, and she was always smiling even if we couldn't communicate.  She was very devoted to her church, neighbors, and family.  I remember she used to tease me that I was the "favorite" sister-in-law, and I'd always tell her that she was my favorite too.  She is.  She will be so missed by many.  In the few visits we have had, my kids and I have grown to love her and we'll all miss her kind and welcoming face.

Chemo will be in Mexico for her funeral and visiting with his family for a few days.  He's the youngest of 8 siblings and most of his family, including his Dad, live in Ciudad Hidalgo, Michoacan, Mexico:  (central Mexico)....(getting there basically involves 5 hours by plane, and 5 hours of driving).  It's been almost 3 years since we've all visited there together as a family, and though the circumstances of this visit for him are obviously not ideal,  I do hope somehow he'll have a good visit being with the rest of his family.  It's our hope to try and visit all together again for Christmas if we can.

One of life's toughest lessons is having to say good-bye.  My husband lost one of his sister this week, and I hope the time he's visiting there will ease his heartache.  Life can seem pretty short...and not much else really matters in life, but family.

Time seems to be flying on by, and it is already that first weekend after the first "week" of school, (though it was actually only a 3 day week since they started on Wednesday).  This year we have a freshman in high-school, a 6th grader, a 2nd grader, and a soon-to-be-in-preschooler.  On the first day of school I thought I'd do the usual "first day of school routine" with the rest of the parents and stay to watch the kids go off to class...but I was ever so politely, yet firmly, asked to leave since the principal decided she'd like to keep the playground a "safety zone" from day one.  Odd.  I really didn't quite know what that meant at first, (my brain was still adjusting to being up at 6:30 a.m.),  but I eventually figured out I needed to go.  First day's back to school are over-rated anyway.  And so I took my last side-kick back home with me to figure out what to do with ourselves.  I wasn't ready to come home to my too-quiet house...but then I remembered how much easier it is to clean a house without a bunch of kids actually in it.

Filling in gaps of time seems to still be this season's theme.  It is still 107 degrees, there's no real homework, and I'm noticing my kids are still doing the same things they did day in and day out before school started.  Wii.  Club Penguin.  Facebook.  TV.  And my sink forever still has dishes in it.

Ugh.  And so I digress....(I really don't have a clue what that word means, but my sister in law mentions it once in a while in her blog and I like how it sounds professional and sassy)....and so I'll digress a bit more...

So once again I am challenged with how else to spend our time on long hot days, and taking bored boys to the gym and pool is usually the only other real option.  By now I've got the drill memorized:  pack snacks, drinks, workout gear, suits, load up all 3 bags, purse, one diet cherry coke, one milk sippy cup and we all go on our merry way.  But after I pulled into the gym parking lot after the 20 minute drive it took us to get there, I looked in my rear-view mirror to see my 4 year old was totally zonked.  Out.  Asleep.  Not waking up.  I had a lot of stuff to carry and adding a heavy, hot 4 year old didn't sound so appealing....and I also didn't want to be one of those Moms that drops off their sleeping toddler in a noisy child care center just to get a lame workout in, so I turned the van around and took us back home.  Turns out that wasn't so great a decision.

A 4 year old boy who falls asleep clutching his goggles and wakes up finding out he's not going to get to swim will cry for 45 minutes on how mad he is at you for not taking him to the gym until his lips start quivering.  It was so sad it was funny....and it was so funny it was sad.  And my lips started quivering too....I really had nothing else I really wanted to do anyway so I caved and so I drove us all back.  Who knew I'd be spending more than an hour of my day driving in triple digit temperatures.  The truth is you simply cannot survive an Arizona summer with kids without access to a pool...and you really won't care how far you have to drive to get to it.

I love my kids.  Time management is just one of my "job descriptions", and so I plan most of my days around what my kids need and where they want or need to be.  Saturdays will soon be filled up with soccer, softball, and football games...and for now, we have a lot of free time.  Sometimes that feels like an open invitation for boredom, but I keep reminding myself that time with them now is a gift.

I think Gandalf was talking to Mom's as well as Frodo in the Fellowship of the Ring:  "All we need to decide, is what to do with the time that is given to us."

I hope to always remember to make the most of my time with them...they're growing up so fast.  Too fast.

One of my first blogs was something about how I thought that Sunday's were so great.  I think when I first started blogging I thought that maybe I had to write about what a day in the life of a stay-at-home-Mom looks like and somehow cutesify it.  The truth is I wish I had more energy to be a "fun" Mom, but the reality has become that Sundays are hard.  Sundays used to be like the beginning of the week; like a new start, but for me they feel more like the end...like what the last 3 miles feel like of a marathon...you're just so tired, but you have to keep going.  You want to rest, but you can't.  There's always laundry to catch up on, ignored mail to sort, endless dishes...fights to stop, supervising turns on the Wii and computer...sigh.

So in an effort to take a day off from the kitchen, I made a lame dinner.  My kids were just about to eat cookies and popcorn so instead I boiled them a bunch of noodles and slapped a jar of alfredo sauce on top.  The hot dog I microwaved up for my son shriveled up and half exploded and when I went to cut it up into pieces some of the juice squirted out and burned his arm.  He cried.  So did I.

So sometimes I feel like the worst Mom ever.  My soul felt as shriveled up as the loser hot dog.  So I hung my head on top of my piles of coupons and just sobbed. 

I've been needing something and haven't been able to quite figure it out, but I was reminded in some words in a worship song that touched my heart this morning:

You hold the universe in your hands.  You hold everyone.
All I need is you Lord, is you Lord, All I need is you. 
All I need is you.

Not sure how to conclude, except that I'm comforted that God holds me.  Us.  Everything.